M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." eBook

There’s Sonny’s step, now. I can
tell it quick ez he sets it on the back steps.
Sence I’m sort o’ laid up, Sonny gits into
the saddle every day an’ rides over the place
an’ gives orders for me.

Come out here, son, an’ shake hands with the
doctor.

Pretty warm, you say it is, son! An’ th’
ain’t nothin’ goin’ astray on the
place? Well, that’s good. An’,
doc’, here, he says thet his bill for this visit
is a unwarranted extravagance ’cause they ain’t
a thing I need but to start on the downward way thet
leads to ruin. He’s got me all threatened
with the tremens now, so thet I hardly know how to
match my pronouns to suit their genders an’
persons. He’s give me fully a tablespoonful
o’ the reverend stuff in one toddy. I tell
him he must write out a prescription for the gold
cure an’ leave it with me, so’s in case
he should drop off befo’ I need it, I could git
it, ‘thout applyin’ to a strange doctor
an’ disgracin’ everybody in America by
the name o’ Jones.

Do you notice how strong he favors her to-day,
doctor?

I don’t know whether it’s the toddy I’ve
took thet calls my attention to it or not.

[Illustration: “When I set here by myself
on this po’ch so much these days an’ think.”]

She always seemed to see me in him—­but
I never could. Far ez I can see, he never taken
nothin’ from me but his sect—­an’
yo’ name, son, of co’se. ‘Cep’in’
for me, you couldn’t ‘a’ been no
Jones—­’t least not in our branch.

Put yo’ hand on my forr’d, son, an’
bresh it up’ards a few times, while I shet my
eyes.

Do you know when he does that, doc’, I couldn’t
tell his hand from hers.

He taken his touch after her, exact—­an’
his hands, too, sech good firm fingers, not all plowed
out o’ shape, like mine. I never seemed
to reelize it tell she’d passed away.

That’ll do now, boy. I know you want to
go in an’ see where the little wife is, an’
I’ve no doubt you’ll find her with a wishful
look in her eyes, wonderin’ what keeps you out
here so long.

Funny, doctor, how seein’ him and little Mary
Elizabeth together brings back my own youth to me—­an’
wife’s.

From the first day we was married to the day we laid
her away under the poplars, the first thing I done
on enterin’ the house was to wonder where she
was an’ go an’ find her. An’
quick ez I’d git her located, why, I’d
feel sort o’ rested, an’ know things was
all right.

Heap of his ma’s ways I seem to see in Sonny
since she’s went.

An’ what do you think, doc’? He’s
took to kissin’ me nights and mornin’s
since she’s passed away, an’ I couldn’t
tell you how it seems to comfort me.

Maybe that sounds strange to you in a grown-up man,
but it don’t come no ways strange to me—­not
from Sonny. Now he’s started it, seems like
ez ef I’d ’ve missed it if he hadn’t.

Ez I look back, they ain’t no lovin’ way
thet a boy could have thet ain’t seemed to come
nachel to him—­not a one. An’
his little wife, Mary Elizabeth, why, they never was
a sweeter daughter on earth.